“Sustainable” Products: Real vs. Greenwashing

A genuine sustainability claim names something checkable: a material, a certification, a process. A greenwashed one uses a feeling instead: “eco-conscious,” “natural,” “planet-friendly,” none of it backed by anything you could actually check.

In India, this isn’t just a matter of taste anymore. The Central Consumer Protection Authority’s 2024 guidelines on greenwashing, and ASCI’s own 2024 code, both require environmental claims to be specific, substantiated, and not misleading by omission. A brand that says “eco-friendly” without saying what makes it so is increasingly on the wrong side of that rule, not just the wrong side of good marketing.

What greenwashing usually looks like

Vague adjectives standing in for evidence. Earthy colours and plant imagery doing the persuading instead of any actual data. A single sustainable feature (recyclable packaging, say) used to describe an entire product line whose manufacturing process might not be sustainable at all. Selective disclosure: the brand mentions what’s going well and stays quiet about what isn’t.

What a real claim looks like instead

It says what the product is made from, in plain terms. It names a certification body if it’s citing one, rather than just implying third-party approval. It’s willing to say where the process still falls short, because a brand with nothing to improve is usually a brand that isn’t being honest.

That’s the standard we try to hold our own product pages to: what a thing is made from, how to plant or reuse it, and where the material actually comes from. If a claim on our site is ever unclear or unverifiable, tell us. We’d rather fix it than defend it.

The consumer’s job in all this is smaller than it sounds: ask what a label actually means before trusting it, and treat a vague claim as a claim that hasn’t earned your trust yet.